(first posted 11/11/2011) The one universal and infallible truth about the automotive design business is that everyone copies. Now obviously, someone has to innovate from time to time for others to copy from, and in the fifties, Pininfarina played that role more than anyone else. But that’s not to say they were immune to the outside influences either, as this concept for a 1955 Fiat 1100 wagon shows all to clearly. And before you point out the similarities of the rear fenders and taillights to those of a 1954 Ford, keep in mind we’re talking about the 1954 Nomad Concept, not the final production car. And its rear end looked like this:

Now about that rear-slanting B Pillar on the Fiat…guess he didn’t want to be too obvious. Well, that and the fact that it was a bit of a PF trademark at the time. And the Fiat’s chrome side spear ends a few inches sooner. Can’t be to blatant.

Now watch someone come along and show us an earlier Pininfarina design that the Nomad cribbed.

I love when manufacturers copy just because it gives you a vauge “WTF+deja vu” feeling you get looking at the design. Without the captioning on the Fiat based concept I would have thought it was a later evolution of the Nomad concept.

I wouldn’t call it copying or cribbing. I’ve said it before about the give and take between GM:s design studio and Pininfarina in particular, but all of that was built on a profound mutual respect for each other. See them as musicians instead. Everything is variations on a theme, but there’s also a lot of outright theft. I would look at this particular interplay as Pininfarina trying out a new rhythm. “Hmm, I wonder what that would sound like with a heavy rhumba beat behind it”. Fads come and go, new dances are all the rave for a while, just to be substituted by something else. And there were no people that had their ear closer to the ground than these people. It’s just a play, and they’re playing with themes to see what happens. Once in a while they come up with something that either breaks new ground or becomes a hit…

I wouldn’t call it copying or cribbing…. but there’s also a lot of outright theft.

So which is it?

I made it very clear in the first line or so that everyone was doing it. And you can turn it into a music analogy, but in music, folks have been sued for taking someone else’s rhythm and not giving credit.

This is what it is: an obvious case of cribbing or copying. Nothing unusual, except for that it more often went the other direction. Well, until the ’60 Corvair came along.

As always, there’s really no defining line, it’s a a moving scale from one end to the other. And if anybody wanna be sure where the line is drawn, there’s usually a lot of lawyers involved. And I don’t think anbody cribbed as much off each other than Pininfarina and GM. But they were also some of the most trend sensitive people in the entire business. To use the music analogy further, i’d call them the automotive equivalent of Quincy Jones and Giorgio Moroder. These were the people that actually started new trends…

Damn that analogy just gets tighter and tighter. Let us not forget Maurice White and Nile Rodgers/Bernard Edwards. Giorgio did seem to initiate the bouncing ‘four-to-the-floor’ with Donna, though. And Q smoothed it into Off the Wall and Brothers Johnson. But where do we place Hamilton Bohannon and the Blue Notes’ original version of ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’?

There’s reason to believe that these were authorized. The company that later became ZIS hired Harley as a consultant in ’32, and continued to create Buick-based designs. No firm evidence that the contract continued, but these ‘insider’ copies tend to support the idea.